Union Bank of the Philippines has drawn over 200 students and 35 agencies from the government and universities to its Innovation Campus since it started construction two years ago to accelerate the country’s digital transformation.
“They include staff of various kinds like those in human resources, information technology and administrative divisions. People enroll here, create projects to demonstrate the uses of what they learned and return to their organizations to share new knowledge,” Roger Collantes, president of Asian Institute of Digital Transformation, told the Daily Tribune last Thursday.
The Innovation Campus and the bank collaborate to teach data science, artificial intelligence or AI and blockchain, among others, which are used to automate services, customize products and prevent cybercrimes.
More students
Collantes expects more students to avail of their courses which can be completed in two days to eight weeks.
“We feel we’re just on the surface. Now we are reaching out to local government units. The Asian Development Bank also approached us.”
Collantes said the Philippines has to catch up in upskilling its labor force as the world is quickly shifting to digital, driven by the widening use of AI.
The World Economic Forum says AI can increase employees’ productivity by 40 percent, while AI-powered ChatGPT can automate 62 percent of language-related tasks.
“Most universities do not teach blockchain, AI, or data science because these are emerging technologies and they also lack teachers. We hire employees so we know there’s a gap,” Collantes explained.
Collantes said the innovation campus has yet to reach out to small business owners to also help digitalize their operations as its courses focus on building the right foundation first.
Building the ecosystem
“When you say digital transformation, it means you have to build the ecosystem first, to clean up digital inefficiencies of your organization before spreading to individuals. The goal is to digitize the workplace so your customers can have the same experience.”
Collantes said the graduates of the innovation campus can help improve the Philippine banking industry which consists of UnionDigital Bank of UnionBank and five other digital banks.
He shared UnionBank will enable them to contribute to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas’s enterprise architecture project aimed at improving business strategies.
UnionBank is a member of the Banking Industry Architecture Network, a non-profit group that adopts the world’s best business strategies amid the rapid growth in consumer technologies.